HOUSE OF LEAVES

This novel is not a sequel to Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass . In fact, it’s not like anything I’ve ever read before. Welcome to the world of ergodic literature. This was my first foray into this genre, and I liked it. This genre requires the reader to make a real effort to read and interpret the text. There are different ergodic levels, such as Charlton Mellick III’s bizarro Cuddly Holocaust or Ayn Rand’s play Night of January 16th, a murder trial where the jury is picked out of the audience, and their verdict decides the outcome of the play. I’m not sure where Mark Z. Danielewski’s novel fits in the world of ergodicity, but I’ll give the next reader an idea of what’s in store for you: hundreds of footnotes (some real, most not), one to four texts on the same page; some pages blank, some with one or two words; some pages upside down, some obliquely angled; and, different narrators on the same page. And why is the word ‘house’ always in blue and ‘minotaur’ in red? I have to say that some of the footnotes are pure genius. The reader does eventually understand what’s going on, because the diverse narrators and variant footnotes are in distinctive fonts! Absolutely brilliant!

The postulation of this book is that it’s the true story of an old man’s dissertation of a documentary film called The Navidson Record. A blind old man named Zampano walks around his apartment complex every day followed by 80 cats. One day Zampano drops dead in his apartment facedown with deep claw marks alongside his body. Since there isn’t any trauma to the body, it is deemed a natural death. One of the sidebar characters, Lude, also lives in the building and calls his friend, Johnny Truant, a tattoo parlor employee, to tell him that there is an apartment available in his building. Johnny comes quickly to see the apartment and discovers a trunk full of notes and documents about a film called The Navidson Report. He takes the trunk home and starts reading, arranging, and editing Zampano’s papers even after he finds out that there is no such film. The story never reveals where the six to seven inch claw marks came from, or why the 80 cats disappeared after the old man’s death. This is a strange story. The reader doesn’t know what is real or fake throughout the 709 pages.

Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green, and their children, Daisy and Chad, move into a house on Ash Tree Lane in the Jamestown area of Virginia. Will is a Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist, and Karen is an ex-model. They are trying to see if they can save their common-law marriage. Will decides to mount cameras in every room and film the move to see how “everything turns out” in their relationship after getting a Guggenheim Fellowship and a media arts grant for the project. The family goes to Seattle, and when they come back, they discover that the house is slightly bigger on the inside than the outside. Then, a closet between their bedroom and the childrens' suddenly appears, and overnight, a large dark hallway emerges out of nowhere. What is going on? He seeks help from his friend Billy Reston and finally, from famed explorer and hunter Holloway Roberts and his crew. They explore the dark hallway three times without success. Meanwhile, usually on the same page, Johnny Truant is telling the story of Zampano’s notes on the Navidson film and his own life story at the same time.

As Navidson’s life gets byzantine within the arcane house, Johnny’s life becomes one drunken sexual escapade after another as he starts losing his mind over Zampano’s papers. We meet Thumper, the stripper, and many of Zampano’s ex-scribes, with which Johnny has sex. On their fourth exploration of the dark hallway in the house on Ash Tree lane, Holloway Roberts and his crew don’t return! Periodic growls are heard in the walls, sometimes close, sometimes far away. Johnny continues to lose his mind. As he thinks about the missing cats, he says to himself, “Something else has taken their place. Something I am unable to see. Waiting.” In the interim, Will tells his distressed wife, “They’ve been in there almost eight days with water for six. It’s three in the morning...” So Will, his brother Tom, and Billy Reston decide to go into the dark hallway and find Holloway and his crew. Meanwhile, Johnny thinks to himself, “My fear’s gotten worse...My teeth ache. My head aches. My stomach’s a mess.” Back at the house, things are bleak as the house has finally started to attack! If this paragraph seems confusing, well get used to it because that’s the motif of this newfangled but extraordinary novel. I’ve only given you a taste of what’s to come! Prepare to have your blood run cold.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Would I ever read another ergodic novel? I would say no, but that’s what I said about China Mieville’s weird fiction novel Kraken; and since then, I’ve read three more. So, I’ll see what strikes my interest in the future. What does Danielewski think of his 709 page novel? He says, “Make no mistake, those who write long books have nothing to say. Of course those who write short books have even less to say.”
 
After reading this novel, it crossed my mind that this book should be studied and discussed for its newness and hidden meanings as many less worthy novels are. I found out that there was a Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal done by Scarano and Krause that stated “House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski, is a novel first published in 2000 that has since developed notoriety in literary circles for its arguably unique experimentation with a multi-layered plot, varied visual typography, and multi-media format. Despite being widely read and influential over the past decade, little scholarly analysis has been done on House of Leaves. As House of Leaves could represent an entire new genre of literature, it is important that we understand its themes and the ways in which various writerly techniques function within the novel. In this paper, I analyze House of Leaves through an existential lens, specifically utilizing the ideas of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus to examine the psyche of one of the novel’s main characters, Johnny Truant. In addition to primary sources by Danielewski, Sartre and Camus, I employ a 2002 analysis of House of Leaves by Katherine N. Hayles to aid my research. I conclude that Johnny’s story, and House of Leaves as a whole, breaks down traditional notions of reality, but retains existential hope for individuals who are able to find a purpose in life, even if that “purpose” is necessarily subjective. My analysis presents an original take on House of Leaves, and contains wider implications for future novels that emulate its experimental style. Past analyses have focused on post-modern aspects of House of Leaves, but I analyze it through an existential lens. Beyond adding to the body of work on House of Leaves, my existential take on an otherwise post-modern text may prove influential to analyses of other “post-modern” novels in the future”.

With ergodic literature, there is no limit on how weird the writer can get. The name for this genre was coined by Espen J. Aarseth, author of Cybertext . Besides the novels I mentioned in the first paragraph, see Composition No. 1 by Marc Saporta. The novel comes with loose pages in a box! You as the reader decide on what order you want to read them. My last example is Milorad Pavic’s Landscape Painted with Tea . This novel is part modern day Odyssey and a crossword puzzle. Has anybody out there noticed how unusual all the authors' names are?